The Measure of his Joy
by mum-to-you
Summary: At the beginning of the year of the Sorcerer's Stone, new prefect Percy Weasley has a crush on a certain Ravenclaw girl. It's a tad fluffy, but it's redeemed by some significant literary allusions.


The Measure of his Joy

Out of habit, Percy Weasley's hand shot up to wipe his cheek where his mother had kissed him. Then he thought better of it and let his hand drop to his side. "Really," he muttered to himself, "grow up, Percy. There's absolutely nothing to kissing your mum good-bye." He decided then and there that he would leave that sort of childish behavior to his little brothers from here on in. He put his hands into the pockets of his robes, hoping this would reflect a more mature look and attitude as he walked down the platform with just a slight swagger. He didn't want to overdo it.

He looked around briefly and, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of curly black hair. He sucked in his breath quickly. Unless he was sadly mistaken, that particular head of hair was attached to a very nice, rather pretty, and extremely smart Ravenclaw girl he had noticed last year. A Ravenclaw girl he was reasonably certain had regarded him not at all.  
  
He had spent a surprising amount of time over the summer thinking about that particular dark head and the girl who accompanied it. In fact, she had also been prominent in a series of very vivid dreams he recalled with more than a little embarrassment. Dreams that tended to involve rather a lot of snogging and tended _not _to involve very many articles of clothing. He felt himself blush violently about that, but he couldn't actually go so far as to suppress his smile.  
  
"_Penelope Clearwater_," he thought, "_Would a rose by any other name still smell as sweet_?" He wondered if that thought would sound as goopy if he said it aloud. Probably. Then it occurred to him that his shiny new prefect badge might just be the ticket to his getting noticed at last. He quickened his pace to follow her onto the train. "_Besides_," he thought, "_I have every right to be monitoring the younger students as they board. I am a prefect, after all_."  
  
By the time he reached the door, his quarry had entered the train, and he was almost at a gallop. He boarded the train with a great leap, and then abruptly stopped to look around in a discreet manner for Penelope. He didn't see her, but before he proceeded down the corridor, he took a moment to straighten his robes, smooth his windblown hair, push his glasses back up on his nose, and, of course, check to make sure his badge was in place and prominent. He couldn't remember the last time he had been more nervous.  
  
He wiped his sweating palms on his robes and thrust them back in his pockets, and then started strolling in what he hoped was a sophisticated and nonchalant manner. He paused at each compartment as if checking on students, putting on a hearty and avuncular tone when addressing nervous first years. That seemed to be the best way to handle them. All the while, though, he was keeping a sharp eye out for the pretty Ravenclaw girl.  
  
He peered into a compartment midway down the corridor and noticed someone struggling to get a valise up onto the overhead luggage rack. Then, the girl suddenly lost her footing and cried out in alarm. The valise started sliding of the rack. On reflex, Percy dashed forward and, being exceptionally tall, managed to catch the case before it hit her on the head. He staggered under its unexpected weight. "Oof!" he grunted. "Merlin's beard, what have you got in this thing, bricks?" He set the heavy valise on the seat with a groan and turned to the girl. To his acute embarrassment, it was Penelope. Percy felt as if his ears were starting to glow. "_Great_," he thought despairingly, "_now she thinks I'm some kind of nancy boy_."

He was relieved to see her smile up at him sheepishly. "Not bricks. Books. And thank you. Thank you very much. It _is_ extremely heavy, and I was very silly to try to lift it by myself."

Percy opened and closed his mouth several times before asking solicitously, "You're all right, then? This thing could have given you a concussion!"  
  
"I'm perfectly fine. And thanks, really. You seem to have arrived just in time to save me from meeting an untimely and excruciating death." She smiled at him in a way that almost made him forget to breathe.

After an awkwardly silent moment, Percy cast his eyes around the room for some clue as to how he might prolong the conversation. His eyes lighted on the valise. "Books," he said hopefully. "Getting a head start on your classes already? That's a great idea. You're a fourth-year, aren't you? You'll have O.W.L.S. next year, and it's never too early to start. I ought to know. I've been swotting away all sum--" He stopped abruptly.

"_Shut up, shut up, shut up_," he told himself crossly." "_Quit yammering on like such a prat!_"

She just smiled and shook her head. "They aren't my textbooks. It's literature, really. Muggle literature. My dad's an Oxford don. He teaches English Lit--mostly Shakespeare." She blushed prettily, then added, "I read a lot."

There was just enough of his father in Percy that he was utterly entranced by this revelation. "Shakespeare? I've read quite a lot of Shakespeare. _Romeo and Juliet_ was just breathtaking. It's hard to believe that a Muggle could have writ--" Percy flushed to the roots of his red hair. "I'm so sorry. That was frightfully rude."  
  
Penelope, he discovered, had a gentle, melodious laugh that made his toes fairly tingle. She looked at him impishly and teased, "You're so certain that Shakespeare was a Muggle, are you? I rather wonder about that myself. How's that for an authorship controversy?"  
  
Percy could think of nothing to say to this and resorted to opening and closing his mouth again. He was spared from having to think of something staggeringly clever to say when Penelope proffered a poised hand and smiled that devastating smile again. "By the way, I'm Penelope Clearwater."  
  
"Really?" he murmured. He smiled tentatively and shook her hand. "Percy. Percy W--"  
  
"Weasley. I know," she finished. "You Weasleys are hard to miss."  
  
Percy blushed yet again, quite at loss as to whether this was a good thing or a bad thing, but was relieved to see that Penelope was still smiling. "_She smiles rather a lot_," he thought, liking that immensely, _"And she _has_ noticed me." _He liked that even more.

Suddenly, he recalled that he had duties to tend to. He hoisted up the cumbersome valise and heaved it up on the luggage rack, saying, "Not so heavy, after all, if you're expecting it. It should stay now. Wouldn't want you to spend your first night back at school in the hospital wing, would we?" Penelope shook her head and just looked at him intently for a moment.

"Right," he said, feeling awkward under her gaze. "I, erm, need to go now, I guess. I should check on my youngest brother. He's a first-year." He turned to go, but paused at the door to look at her one last time.  
  
"Thank you again, Percy," she said quietly.  
  
Percy nodded and said, "Hope to see you around then. Penelope." Then he smiled at her and left the compartment. Out in the corridor, he leaned against the wall, breathing rapidly. He thought for a moment while he removed his glasses and wiped them on the edge of his robes before replacing them. On the whole, he felt that things hadn't gone badly. He hadn't humiliated himself unduly, and really, he _had_ saved her from a possible serious injury. Not bad at all. After catching his breath, Percy walked to the prefects' compartments with a rather jaunty air.  
  
The rest of the trip was rather uneventful. The twins' friend Lee Jordan had to be reminded to put his tarantula away at least a dozen times and some silly first-year kept losing his toad, but that was all. Dad would be interested to know that Lucius Malfoy's boy was a first-year. That one would certainly bear watching this year! He didn't catch another sight of Penelope on the train, but at the Hogsmeade station, he watched with dismay as she walked down the platform with a very handsome fourth-year boy in a Hufflepuff tie who was carrying what looked to be a new broom. Percy's eyes narrowed. A Nimbus 2000, from looks of it. That figured. The Diggorys, who lived near the Weasleys, only had the one son. Nice enough bloke, but he certainly never had to do without. If that was the competition, Percy figured he was doomed.

He did see Penelope at the Sorting Feast, though. She was sitting directly across the room from him at the Ravenclaw table, which meant that he could spend quite a lot of time gazing at her through the flickering candlelight. Once, she caught him looking her direction, but before he could duck his head, she smiled at him and gave him a little wave. He waved back, but was too discomfited to give her more than a lopsided grin. After a very ridiculous version of the school song, Dumbledore dismissed the students, and Percy led the new first-years up the marble staircase behind the returning students.

He wasn't sure exactly what happened, but all of a sudden Marcus Flint, a Slytherin boy he had never got on with, barged up the stairs, where he had no business being in the first place, pushing and shoving people out of his way. He called someone on the landing a very, very bad name, and then a girl at the top of the stairs screamed and started to topple down the stairs. Percy saw the girl start to fall and bounded up the stairs just in time to catch her.

To both his exquisite horror and delight, he looked down to discover that he was actually holding Penelope Clearwater in his arms. At first, his tongue kept sticking to the roof of his mouth, but seeing the real fear in her eyes, he quickly recovered and set her back on her feet. "Are you all right?" he asked her in a genuinely concerned voice.  
  
"I think so. Just a little shaken up." With one hand, she clutched the banister, and with the other, she held on to Percy's robes. She looked down the stairs and shuddered, realizing how far she would have fallen if someone hadn't caught her. She looked up at him with a bewildered look on her face. "It's you again!" she exclaimed. Her cheeks turned a delicate pink, and she smiled up at him shyly. "You do seem to be my personal hero today, don't you?"  
  
At those words, Percy's chest swelled with pride and couple of other emotions he didn't have time analyze at the moment. With a modesty his brothers would surely have found remarkable, he just shrugged and said in an offhand manner, "I've just been in the right place at the right time, that's all. Call it lucky." Percy's heart was beating like a bass drum.  
  
"Lucky for me, that's for certain. Thank you, Percy. I'm really very grateful to you."  
  
"No thanks necessary, I assure you, Penelope. I'm happy if I could help." He nodded towards the first-years, who were starting to fidget. "I need to get this lot upstairs and tucked in, I suppose. Maybe I'll see you at breakfast tomorrow?"

Penny looked around at the gawking eleven-year-olds around them, then back up at Percy. "Why, you're a prefect! I didn't notice your badge earlier. I imagine you have a lot of responsibilities yet tonight, don't you? Then I promise to try not to require rescuing again, at least until tomorrow, so you can get on with things." She smiled at him with obvious admiration, and all of a sudden, he didn't give a damn if the first years ever got to bed at all. After a moment, Penelope continued, "Breakfast, then. I'll see you tomorrow. And thanks again. For everything." She turned aside to allow the Gryffindors to move up the stairs.

Percy wished Penelope a good night and reminded her, only half jokingly, to be careful. As he led the first-years up the stairs towards the Gryffindor tower, he could feel Penny's eyes on him all the way. He guided the youngsters up a turn in the staircase, and when he looked back, sure enough, she was still watching him. Her head was tilted slightly, and there was a rapt look on her face that elated him. He managed to maintain a dignified and professional air all the way to the Gryffindor common room, but all the while, he wanted to whoop and jump and turn cartwheels down the corridors. He, Percy Weasley, who, in the understatement of the century, was not particularly well known for being a ladies' man, was dead certain that he was making a very, very good impression on Miss Penelope Clearwater!  
  
That night, after his duties had been completed, Percy sat on the windowsill of his dormitory, looking down onto the moonlit grounds. Mercifully, his roommates had already turned in, and he was relishing a rare moment of solitude. Chasing the twins around the common room to get back his prefect badge had put him in a foul mood, but now all he could think about was Penelope. It didn't seem quite real that he had all but rescued her twice in one day, actually held her in his arms, and arranged to meet her for breakfast in the morning. He couldn't remember a better start to a school year. In a couple of weeks was the first Hogsmeade weekend. If he didn't wake up tomorrow and find it was all just a dream, maybe he would ask her to tea. If she said yes, there would simply be no way to measure his joy. Just thinking on it, his heart was pounding, and he could feel himself grow very warm. He rested his forehead against the cool windowpane. Somewhere outside, he could hear a nightingale. Unbidden, words he had read some time ago came back to him. As he whispered them, his breath fogged up the window and blurred his vision.  
  
_O blessed, blessed night! I am afear'd.  
Being in night, all this is but a dream,  
Too flattering-sweet to be substantial._

From where he sat, there was no way for Percy to know for sure. He couldn't see that far ahead. He'd have to wait and find out in the morning, when the larks would be singing.


End file.
